ESSAY 1V. 883 ing." Methinks we need not be much at a logs to answer this question. It is plain to me, whensoever such moral propositions are offered to the mind, it judges, or ought to judge of them by surveying the fitness and unfitness of things, the right and the wrong, by the light of reason : But then if you come to ask, " Why does reason judge that this is fit and right, the other is wrongor unfit, (viz.) that contracts are to be kept rather than broken ?" &c. I say, it is the very nature of an intelligent being to perceive this fitness, and it is the nature of a reasoning mind to judge so, and it cannot judge otherwise when free from all evil biasses; just as when the eye sees a round globe put up into a neat, round, hollow case, it sees the fitness of these two things to each other ; and the soul judges, and cannot butjudge, that there is a mutual fitness between the globe and the round case, and that there is a mutual unfitness between such a globe and a square case. I allow therefore, that there is such a sort of natural sense in the mind (if it may be called so) which beholds these congrui- ties and fitnesses of natural things, and their relation to each other, and which inclines and determines it to judge thus con- cerning natural propositions or axioms of truth ; so that in more open and obvious instances, the weakest mind can scarce judge otherwise. Theunderstanding is like the eyeof the soul, it sees the fitness of the subject, and predicate to each other, and in such propositions it cannot but see it ; and thus it judges that they must be joined together. It is. so much the very nature and make of the soul, to see and judgeof things in this manner, that I. take it to be a part of reason itself; which, as it were, impli- citly contains in it these natural axioms of truth or princi- ples of judgment inwrought by the Creator of souls ; not in the explicit form of propositions, but as principles and springs of judgment and reasoning. I allow also in the same manner, that there is such a thing which may be called a moral sense in the mind, which inclines the man to judge right, and especially in the more general, plain and obvious queries aboutvirtue andvice : But this moral sense is still the same thing, is the very nature and make of the'mind; it is intelligence or reason itself, considered as capable of dis- cerning, discoursing or judging about moisi subjects. And it contains in it these plain and general principles of morality, not explicitly as propositions, but only as native principles, by which it judges, and cannot but judge virtue to be fit, and vice unfit, for intelligent and social creatures which God has made. As for thewordmoral sense, ifit be taken to mean any thing more, that is, a sort of pathetic instinct, or disposition toieard goodness, I think even this may be allowed so far, that in humáu
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